Manus in Mano
by Shadows Underground
Summary: A variation on hand!kink. Blackwood/Coward.


**Manus in Mano**

"What wouldn't you do for me, Coward?"

The question suspends itself in the heavy silence, which has almost itself become an entity.

Through wet, quivering lips, Coward draws a shaky breath and answers, "My Lord, there is nothing I will not do for you."

His heartbeat is light and fast; he has to suppress the sigh of relief that approaches when his master draws the blade away from his throat.

Blackwood smiles down at him, draws his thumb over that vulnerable bottom lip, says, "You always were the one most loyal to me, Coward. If I told you to crawl naked through Parliament while begging to be fucked, you would do it without protest, wouldn't you?"

His voice sounds amused, but Coward nods anyway, and he knows despite his horror at the idea that he means it.

Blackwood barely seems to take notice of this though, and removing his thumb from Coward's lip he orders, "Your hand."

Coward proffers his left hand. The strength of his master's grip contrasts the fragility of his fingers, and in an absurd way, it is reassuring. He feels his master position the blade over the healing skin on his thumb—over the scar left from the last time he had vowed. He closes his eyes, waiting for the cold sting of metal slicing through skin... but it doesn't come. Tentatively he opens his eyes.

Blackwood has begun dragging the edge of the blade over the delicate skin of his palm. Coward looks at him questioningly, says, "My Lord?" Blackwood silences him with a look, scrapes over the lines crisscrossing his palm with the point of the blade, gently and slowly so as not to draw blood.

And the countless nerves in his hand fire off responses; the muscles in his back tighten; he shivers; his lips part; every movement of the blade blazes a trail in his skin that he can feel long after in its absence.

Removing the cool metal from the sensitive surface of Coward's skin, Blackwood brings that trembling hand closer to him. Smiling darkly, he pulls the hand to his face and presses his lips to the cut on the thumb.

Coward gasps, his hand jerks as he fights his instinct to pull it away, and Blackwood clamps down on the flesh between index and middle finger, stilling the hand sternly and moving his lips across the skin already kissed by the blade. Coward inhales sharply, holds his breath, eventually lets it out in a moan when his master's tongue traces the line creasing the middle of his hand.

Blackwood smirks at him. "So wanton, Coward. And I haven't even begun fucking you yet."

With Coward's wrist firmly in his grasp, he begins to swiftly tear the clothing off of Coward's body with his free hand. His chest is bared and the fastenings on his pants undone, and Coward, on his knees, feels them easily slide down his thighs. He is lowered to the ground, the pants come off, his legs are spread, and his master has yet to let go of his hand.

He suckles the fingers pressed into his mouth, feels them shoved into his entrance, opens his legs a little wider. His master splits him open, wrenches cries from his throat, laughs when he kisses Coward's palm and _that_ is what causes him to moan, not the member thrusting fiercely into his body. And even as each thrust rocks his body and forces his back into a painful arch, Coward only moans when Blackwood attends to his hand.

By the time they climax, Coward's hand is red from the bruising kisses, the sucking, the bites, from Blackwood's punishing grip on his wrist restricting the flow of blood. He is panting, heaving breaths that send tremors through his body. Lord Blackwood runs Coward's fingertip across his teeth, bites it, brings it away, and reaching down with his other hand, strokes Coward's face. It brushes through his hair, down his neck, across his shoulder, and to the knife on the floor. Taking it in his hand, he brings the blade to Coward's reddened thumb and presses the sharp edge to the skin.

"You're mine, Coward," Blackwood states, an irrefutable fact, his eyes locked with Coward's as he says it.

Coward gazes back, lost in the depths of his master's dark green irises, and he responds, "Yours, my Lord." He draws a breath. "I swear it."

The blade slices through his skin in a line parallel to the one made last time. The blood splatters onto Coward's face—he plays a dual role as swearer and sacrifice.

Blackwood lets the blood flow for a minute, the sensual rivulet staining the white skin crimson. Once he decides it is enough, once the sacrifice is made, he pulls that hand to his mouth, caresses the fingers, licks the blood from the wound and Coward moans.

* * *

© Shadows Underground 2010


End file.
